Academic Biosketch

Felix Thoemmes is an assistant professor in the department of Human Development, with joint appointment in the Department of Psychology, at Cornell University. His research interests are causal inference, especially using structural equation models, or propensity scores, missing data, and open science. Before coming to Cornell, he was an assistant professor at Texas A&M University, and the University of Tubingen, Germany.A current CV can be downloaded here.

Personal Biography

In case you are interested, here is a personal biography. I was born in Germany in Mainz, and grew up in small town, Saulheim, about 30 minutes away from the city. I lived there with my parents, two sisters, and my maternal grandparents. I went to elementary school in Saulheim, often riding my bike from my parents’ house to the school, which took about 10 minutes. At the age of 10, I transferred to a high school (in German we call those “Gymnasium”) in Mainz. That meant commuting on a train every morning at 6:45am, then transferring to a 15 minute bus ride, and finally walking the last 5 minutes from the bus station to the school. I did this until I was 18, when I graduated, and started one year of civil service at the University Hospital in Mainz. At the age of 19, I moved to the city of Landau to study psychology. I studied there for 6 semesters, before I came to Terre Huate, Indiana, to Indiana State University as an exchange student on a Fulbright scholarship. My intial plan was to study there for one year, and then return to Germany to finish my degree there. Plans changed, and I decided to stay a year longer to finish my M.A. degree. After that I applied to several Ph.D. programs in Germany and the US. In the end I decided to go to Arizona State University, in particular to get a Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology, working with Steve West. Luckily, my soon-to-be wife was able to find a position at the University of Arizona. For the next 4 years, the two of us commuted between Tempe and Tucson, and in the process ended up seeing a lot of the beautiful state of Arizona. After my Ph.D., I interviewed at two different Universities and decided to accept my first job as an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. We bought a small house, but after one semester there was an unexpected visa issue that forced me to go back to Germany. My wife, being neither an American nor German citizen, had to stay behind in her home country, until I was able to get her a visa to Germany. We first moved to the city of Jena, and I taught my classes at Texas A&M online via skype at 1am in the mornings. After one semester, my visa issue was still not resolved, and I lost my job in Texas. Luckily, a new opportunity opened up, and I became a W-2 (German Associate Rank) Professor at the University of Tubingen. My wife and I moved to the beautiful town of Tubingen, and our first son was born there. When he was 9 months old, my family decided to move back to the US, and I got a position as an Assistant Professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Our second son was born here in Ithaca, and my wife found work at the University. As of 2017, I have lived here for five years.